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The most sure-footed of all mountain animals is the hind. She is a beautiful creature, a female red deer who inhabits the higher slopes of mountainous terrain. Her feet are skinny, appearing fragile and weak. Yet she is able to nimbly navigate treacherous mountain slopes. She adroitly springs from narrow rocky ledges, summiting vast heights as freely as a bird in flight. Wherever the hind chooses to place her front feet, her back feet follow in perfect precision. Each forward motion is followed through with a single-focused consistency that carries her upward in safety.
Christ-followers are constantly climbing as well, sometimes up very steep and treacherous paths. Our goal is to reach the mountain peak without stumbling, slipping or falling, presented faultless before the presence of God’s glory. God calls us ever upward, to scale successfully the challenges of constant temptations, troubling circumstances and difficult people. We are to climb in His power, following in the footsteps and directions of His Son. Like David, we believe that it is:
“God who girds me with strength and makes my ways perfect. He makes my feet like hinds’ feet (able to stand firmly or make progress on the dangerous heights of testing and trouble); He sets me securely upon my high places” (Psalm 18:32-33).
As the hind lives in the heights, we too are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. At salvation, we were raised with Him to dwell above all principalities and dominions of sin and darkness. Clinging to Jesus makes us as sure-footed as the hind. We climb to new heights of holy victory over sin instead of stumbling in defeat.
Are you following in the footsteps of Christ? Confess your weakness and lack of strength apart from Him. Yield humbly to the authority of His words and His Spirit. In His power, you will nimbly traverse the rockiest and narrowest of ways as if on an open plain. You will stand victoriously above the sins that used to keep you in the valley of defeat.
“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore will I deliver him; I will set him on high, because he knows and understands My name…and relies on Me.”
Psalm 91:14
